


proteus

by Chains_and_Pasta



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Shooting, Whump, beaten up, s2 ep17, think 'reservoir dogs'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 18:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17146988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chains_and_Pasta/pseuds/Chains_and_Pasta
Summary: a rewrite of the season 2 episode of the same name for the 2k18 winter whumperland exchange





	proteus

    “Ordinarily, I'd make sure you went behind bars.” Reese said, dragging the unconscious body of the fisherman behind him, “But I’ve got bigger fish to fry. So you go in the trunk.” He unlocked the trunk of Alan’s car. Even through the sheets of rain coming down he could see the large, black body bag, surrounded by photographs of the victims and their remains.

    “What gave me away?”

    Reese turned around, dropping the fisherman, “What did you do to these people, Alan?”

    Before Reese could reach for his gun, Alan was already on top of him, holding him down by his throat with one hand and using the other to attack him, giving him a black eye and breaking his nose. Reese managed to push him off of himself and staggered to his feet, feeling the blood and rain mix together and run down his chin. He felt for his gun again and was stopped by a burst of pain exploding through his side and then again in his shoulder. His fingers found the grip of his pistol, but Alan had beat him to it, wresting the gun from John’s hand and pistol-whipping his face. The crack reverberated through John’s skull as he fell to the ground. The street lights above him swirled around as he tried to blink away the rainwater before falling unconscious.

* * *

 

    Finch stood in the back room of the police station, adjusting the seismograph on the table, waiting for Reese to return. The rain was still coming down hard outside, and even looking out the window in the main room he couldn’t see more than what was right in front of the building. He waited for almost ten minutes, finishing taping and concealing the wires, before leaving the room. He looked around the foyer for his partner. According to his watch, twenty minutes had passed since Reese had left. And the cop that had been helping Reese a while ago didn’t appear to be inside either.

Finch stepped outside, his glasses immediately fogging up with the rain. He took them off and pocketed them, before scanning for a sign of either man. He stumbled on the wet concrete, shouting for Mr. Reese, before seeing a black outline in the distance. He made his way closer and he could see the dark, pooling liquid forming underneath it. He ran up to what he could now see was his partner, knocked unconscious and bleeding profusely. Finch knelt down beside him,

“Mr. Reese?” Suddenly, light flooded the area. Finch looked to see the police car start and drive off in the direction of the bridge. He almost got up to go after it, but realized he had no chance of catching a speeding car, or any car for that matter. He turned back to Mr. Reese, who was now awake, blinking slowly with the sudden burst of light and rainwater in his eyes.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine. Just a little misunderstanding.” Reese attempted to push himself to a sitting position, but fell back when he felt the pain shooting through his shoulder.

“Don’t hurt yourself.” Finch took off his jacket and pressed it against the bullet-wound in Reese’s side. He could see the tendons in his neck tighten as he clenched his jaw in pain. Suddenly the bright flash of headlights returned. Finch squinted as the lights faded as the car turned off and someone stepped out of the passenger side.

“Finch?”

“Detective?” he could barely make out a blurry outline of Detective Carter coming towards him. ”You have impeccable timing.”

“How is he? How is Reese?” Carter looked down at the nearly-unconscious man on the ground.

    “It’s not good.”

“Help me bring him inside.” Carter said, reaching to pull Reese up by his good arm, while Finch pulled his jacked away and tried to steady him.

* * *

 

    “What do you suggest we do, Detective?” Finch looked down at Reese, who was lying on the floor with only a rolled-up blanket supporting his head. He continued to hold his jacket over the wound in Reese’s side.

    “You stay where you are. I’ll see if I can find the first-aid kit.” Carter left the back room, only to return a moment later with the first-aid kit and a water bottle. She knelt down next to Finch and pulled Reese’s jacket away, revealing the blood-soaked dress-shirt underneath. “Is there an exit-wound?”

    “I’m not sure…”

    “There isn’t,” Reese added.

    “Then we’re gonna need to remove the bullets.”

“Hold him still.” She directed at Finch as she grabbed the tweezers from the kit. With gloved hands, Carter undid part of Reese’s shirt to expose the wound before pouring the water over it to clean it.  “I’m sorry, John.”

    Carter started in carefully with the tweezers, grazing the entrance with the cold metal against his exposed muscle. Reese flinched back as Finch pushed gently on his arm to remind him to stay still.

“Hand me those gauze pads.” Blood had started pooling over the edge of the wound again, covering the exposed skin of his stomach and running down his side. Finch held out the gauze towards Carter. “Use that to wipe up the blood.” Finch did what he was told, cleaning up the blood. “Now hold it right there.” she gestured to an area next to where the bullet-hole was.

Finch moved the gauze, watching as it continued to soak up the excess blood while whatever spilled over stained his hands pink. Carter focused back on pulling the bullet out of Reese. Her tweezers found their way deeper into Reese’s side before hitting something metal. She tried to ignore Reese’s groans of pain as she worked her tweezers around the bullet, tearing the sensitive muscle surrounding it. She started to pull it out, making the skin bulge around it.

    “Oh. Oh dear.” Finch, still sitting cross-legged on the ground, was now pale in the face with one hand over his mouth.

    “Don’t pass out on me now, Finch.”

    He turned and looked away, holding the gauze in place the best he could.

    Carter finally managed to extract the bullet in its entirety, wrapping it in a cloth and putting it in her pocket for later inspection. She pulled out the next bullet without much incident, and started bandaging Reese’s wounds. Carter looked down at Reese, “feeling any better?”

He could only respond with a small groan and loll of his head. Even when they were both wounds were covered with heavy layers of gauze and medical tape, blood was still soaking them through, staining them the same bright red as the rest of his shirt. “We need to take him to a hospital.”

    “What?” Finch looked up at Carter, “We can’t do that. We’ll all be arrested.”

    “We can’t just stay here.”

    Finch paused, thinking. “We can take him to the safe house.”

* * *

 

    He felt bad for all the people he had left behind on the island. But he felt worse for his partner, who was bleeding out in the car seat behind him. “How much longer, Detective?”

    “At least another twenty minutes in this weather.”

    Even with the brights on, they couldn’t see more than a couple of inches right in front of them. The rain was still pouring down as the storm looked like it would last through the night. Reese, laying down in the back seat of the police car, clutched the cheap blanket from the station around his shoulders; feeling colder and colder as more blood pulled away from his skin and his wet clothes stuck to him. Finch could hear him groan anytime they hit a particularly hard bump in the road.

* * *

 

    They arrived at the safe house just outside of the city around half an hour later. Carter parked the car on the street and both of them got out. She opened the back door to help Reese, but he didn’t move.

    “Is he breathing?” Finch asked, standing behind Carter with his glasses off.

    Carter leaned over, able to see his chest faintly rising and falling with shallow breaths. “Just barely.”

    They both struggled to pull him out of the car, grabbing him by his good shoulder and trying to prevent banging his head on the car door. Finch could barely hold him up even when they did get him out. Carter did most of the heavy lifting, pulling Reese’s arm around her shoulder to hold him upright, while Finch guided him by his elbow. “You’re going to be alright.”


End file.
